Bush Complaint Online....

[Leslie Goldstein]

I did hear on TV today that some of the counties (I have no idea of how
many) cannot have manual recounts because they have no ballots--voting
is strictly electronic.  This made me feel somewhat better but still I
am troubled by the idea of doing handcounts ONLY in the four most
pro-Gore counties.  Why should it be up to the Bush campaign's
cleverness about deadlinesfor there to be a fair vote-count state-wide?
On the other hand, I consider the Baker claim that hand re-counts
introduce fraud to be specious.  A machine cannot tell if it is jamming
on a bent chad; a person can.Every electronic recount changes the number
of valid votes because the machine breaks loose more of the chads--a
great example of the heisenberg uncertainty principle that measurement
itself changes certain results!
Leslie
Darren Hutchinson wrote:

>  Here's a link to the Bush complaint:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/injunctionrequest111100.htm Notice
> that one of the equal protection claims argues that conducting
> handcounts in select counties arbitrarily denies equal protection to
> voters outside of these jurisdictions.  This argument seems untenable,
> because it suggests that a statewide manual count must always occur --
> if at all; this logic would deprive candidates of the ability to
> demand closer scrutiny of voter irregularities in discrete voting
> districts.  The election statute allows either candidate to seek a
> recount and manual count.  The fact that Bush and Cheney failed to do
> so does not mean that they or voters in jurisdictions not subject to
> manual counts have been denied equal protection.  These voters/Bush
> have simply waived their right to a manual count.  The statute,
> however, gives everyone an equal opportunity to seek manual scrutiny
> of the ballots.
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